The construction of life-like and realistic sculptures, e.g., taxidermy mounts (built upon underlying “manikin” sculptures), clothing mannequins, dolls, artistic sculptures, etc., can be extremely difficult. Every body part must be accurately depicted for the sculpture to be acceptable. Yet accurately depicting body parts, and assembling them into a pleasing whole, often requires the expert mastery of skills, such as sculpting, painting, etc.
One area that is especially difficult is eye construction and placement. This is because, albeit artificial, the eyes must be realistic for the sculpture to appear life-like. Realistic artificial eye construction and placement involve a number of factors, including: the shape of the eye; materials to be used for the eye; alignment and location of the eye on the face of the sculpture; and mounting and placement of the eye in the sculpture. Each of the foregoing factors, as further described below, adds complications to the sculpting process.
The shape of the eye is usually generally hemispherical, or approximately half of a circle. This shape has provided prior art sculptures with mounting points for clay, epoxy, etc. (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,432,919, 4,511,522, 4,515,340, 5,645,780 and 5,735,895 to Rinehart; 4,642,209, 4,596,683 and 4,477,500 to Powell; and 6,007,881 to Lennard). However, due to mounting difficulties, hemispherical eyes do not necessarily provide a life-like installed eye on a taxidermy manikin.
Materials used to make artificial eyes vary. Usually in taxidermy, glass eyes are used, as they provide a good resemblance to natural eyes. Other transparent materials, such as acrylics, may be used as well. Nevertheless, the material must be chosen carefully, as it may fade or crack, thereby ruining the sculpture.
The alignment and location of the eye is critical to the finished sculpture, and must be accurate to produce a life-like result. A sculpture in the taxidermy arts, for instance, usually begins with an animal and a properly sized manikin (usually made of foam and often mass produced), which is prepared by adding appropriate external features, such as ears, eyes, antlers (if present), and the like. For antlers, usually the natural antlers are used, but the remaining external organs are artificial.
For an animal mount, the original animal is skinned and the skin is tanned. Then the skin is placed over the selected manikin and the finishing work done. The manikin provides the infrastructure for the skin or “cape,” yet the size and placement of the artificial eyes, ears, and the like, must correspond with the external organs of the original animal. Thus, customization work by the taxidermist is required to ensure that mass produced foam manikins and the artificial organs match the unique natural infrastructure and features of the animal being mounted in size and shape.
To assist in the placement of artificial eyes on the customized manikins, the manikin design may have “preset” or other designations of eye location. If the manikin does not have designated eye locations, the taxidermist must place the eyes in an appropriate area on the face, which can be very problematic. Then eyelids and other eye-surround contour features are added by the taxidermist, typically using clay or foam. When clay is used, the animal skin is usually lifted onto the manikin, and the eyelid skin is typically pushed onto the clay and adjusted so as to create a life-like appearance of the eyes.
It requires significant artistic skill, time, anatomical knowledge, and experience to recreate eyes and eyelids in a taxidermy manikin so that they look natural and symmetrical. If the pupil is not centered within the eye socket, for example, the eye may be misplaced. Also, if the eye is not located so that it appears to be looking in a life-like direction on the mounted animal, the entire completed mount will appear unnatural. Moreover, for example, some animal species characteristically look downward as well as for ward, and so the appropriate downward angle must be established.
The problems are exacerbated because, of course, eyes are paired in nature, so most realistic sculptures have two eyes. Thus, the eye placement problems are magnified because alignment and retention complications need to be considered for both of the eyes. In other words, each of the two eyes must be properly aligned, each with the other, as well as in relation to the overall animal to create a life-like appearance. In a conventional mount, matching the focus of the two eyes can require hours, and require significant sculpting ability.
Artificial eyes may be set and fixed in, for example, a taxidermy mount, in a number of ways, such as by using epoxy, clay, and the like. However, often such materials have their drawbacks. For instance, epoxy may harden to the extent that it causes the eye to crack. Eye mounting clay is very soft and tends to move when the skin is attached to the manikin, thus distorting the eyelids or making it very difficult to pin the skin in place around the eye. When the skin and clay dry, they shrink; often to the extent that the eyelids move and lose shape and/or symmetry. Additionally, the softer clay takes a considerable amount of time to dry, and as a result the entire sculpture must be set aside, thereby delaying production while waiting for the clay to dry. Thus retaining the mounted eye in the initially desired position (e.g., forward and downward as noted above) may be very difficult.
Attempts have been made to resolve these complications relating to setting the artificial eyes and the surrounding eyelids in the taxidermy mount. For example, a taxidermy manikin may contain a pre-formed eye socket. A system of setting eyes into a mold and pouring foam around the eye to form a foam eyelid is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,412 (the “preset” technique). However, by this method eyes are not consistently insert-molded into the manikin without the possibility of rotation to an incorrect orientation or displacement. The preset eye may not be at the proper angle for a particular specimen, or may not appropriately convey a desired expression. Moreover, the eye may shift as the foam rises and squeezes between the eye and the mold, or the method may fail to maintain the desired eye placement during curing of the foam.
Another attempted solution has been to anchor an eye by use of notches, screws, and the like. Again, these devices often fail to provide proper placement for particular specimens, or they may not permit the taxidermist to appropriately convey a desired expression.
Thus, until the present invention, there has remained an unmet need in the art for simple apparatus and methods of artificial eye installation in realistic sculptures, such as taxidermy mounts, that will accurately and consistently produce an anatomically correct, life-like sculpture, or reliably achieve and maintain the desired artificial eye placement as determined without movement by the sculptor. In addition, it is desirable that such results be accomplished quickly, easily, inexpensively, and without a need for expert sculpturing skills.